Kylie Gave a Keynote!

The One Lesson Every Dad of Daughters Must Learn

270 men. One powerful story.

When Kylie Coulson stood before a room full of dads at the “Fathers of Only Girls” charity lunch, she didn’t give them a parenting lecture — she shared something far more raw and real. This episode is that talk: a deeply moving reminder that the best way to raise strong, emotionally secure daughters begins with one simple act — how you love their mum.

KEY POINTS

• Why emotional safety at home starts with your relationship, not your parenting.
• The real reason your daughter’s future relationships mirror yours.
• What happens when we stop trying to fix and start listening.
• How to model love, grace, and security — even when life feels heavy.
• The single sentence that could redefine fatherhood.

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE

“Sometimes the most effective parenting we’ll ever do has nothing to do with our children — and everything to do with the person we choose to be.”

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Fathers of Only Girls (FOOGS) charity
• happyfamilies.com.au

ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS

1. Hold space for your partner — without fixing or judging.
2. Show your daughter what love looks like in real life.
3. Remember: how you treat her mother is how she’ll learn to love herself.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, this is the Happy Family's podcast. There is a
charity called Fathers of Only Girls the Fogs Fogs. Fogs, Well,
fathers of only Girls the fogs.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
You don't have a capital of a small word.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Like of Oh so it's fogs. So yeah, it's not
it's not to fogs or any fogs. You're all right.
There's a charity out there called Fathers of Other Girls.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
You're just franky because you didn't speak.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
I was speaking somewhere else that day and you got
the invite Kylie to speak to how many was it
two hundred?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
And I was about two hundred and seventy men in
the seats there.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Two hundred and seventy men in Brisbane Down.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I shared the stage with Rebecca Sparrow.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Which is always a delight. Yeah, fantastic. So you spoke
to two hundred and seventy men at the FOG's.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Charity Lunch, annual charity lunch.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
And gave a talk that made people cry. People for
wonderful And we thought today on a Happy Families podcast
rather than doing a usual podcast, even though this was
a couple of weeks ago. We had a spot we
can slot it in here, and we thought that we
would get you to share your talk on the pod
so everyone can hear the amazing stuff that you shared
and the reason that Rebecca Sparrow gave you five stars.
So that's coming up next to stay with us. Hello,

(01:22):
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting Solutions every
single day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are
Justin and Kylie Colson. And today on the pod, Kylie
is going to share her talk from the Fogs Annual Lunch.
The Fogs, Yeah, the Fathers of Girls Annual Lunch, two
hundred and seventy men sitting in a bar in Brisbane
listen to missus Happy Families Kylie, as she shared the following.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
It's eight thirty on a Wednesday. One kid is homesick
in bed, the others are at school, and my husband
should be at work chipping away at a deadline that's
already passed you, but instead is here wrapping his arms
around me while I push him away. I'm fine, I
tell him I don't need your help, but I'm not fine. Now,
before we go further, I need to tell you something.

(02:08):
I'm sure you've worked it out, but I'm not a
father of daughters. I'm the wife in this story, the mother.
But what happened that Wednesday morning changed me, and I
believe is one of the most important lessons you can
teach your daughters. So stay with me that morning. My husband,
he senses the distance growing between us. Emotions are close
to the surface, but I haven't actually taken the time

(02:28):
to understand how I'm feeling. I know the why his
workload is so intense right now, and I feel unimportant.
I think I feel sad, but I'm learning that that's
just the surface stuff, and if I don't dig deep enough,
these feelings can eat me alive. So as uncomfortable and
foreign as it is for me, I choose to lean in.
I choose to be held. I choose to get curious,

(02:51):
and I choose to share the hard and ugly truth
with him, my truth. The truth is I am deeply sad.
He's my best friend, the one I want to spend
every waking moment with, but someone has to pay the bills,
and in our relationship it's him. But when I dig deeper,
there's still more. I'm mad. No, I'm jealous, jealous of

(03:13):
the time he spends in his head in his books,
on the screen, jealous of all he gives to others,
mad that he loves what he does so much he
often bites off more than he can chew, leaving little
time for me, and all the while, as I try
on these emotions tentatively, like a newly made garment, I'm
not sure if it's quite right. As I clumsily try
to express how I'm feeling, he just holds me. My

(03:36):
back pressed against his chest, enables me to keep sharing,
undaunted by what he might see. If our eyes connect,
I can feel the steady beat of his heart, and
I pause, searching deeper, still wondering if I've reached the
bottom of the well. But there's more in his distraction.
I sometimes feel unseen, and I'm afraid, afraid that, after
twenty five years together, in a body that has morphed

(03:58):
more times than I can count, that maybe I'm not
enough anymore, enough to pique his interest, enough to keep
his interest. I search the far reaches of my mind.
I can sense its presence before I even name it.
I'm not sure I want to go there, though it
feels all encompassing, dark, heavy, and ugly, But his reassuring

(04:19):
presence gives me courage to press on on top of
it all. I feel enormous guilt. Guilty that, with all
he has on his plate right now, knowing intimately the
weight of everything he is carrying, I am adding to
his already heavy load. Guilty that what he offers me
right now is not enough for me, that I can't
rest in all we have shared before, knowing that this

(04:39):
is just a small season and time, and there is
so much more in store for us to share. Guilty
because he has proven in countless ways each and every
day we've shared together that I am the love of
his life and he would literally move heaven and earth
to be by my side. Guilty that I would find
fault in his growing desire to make a difference in
the world, that I would get in the way of

(05:01):
the great work he is doing and helping families find
hope in a world that often paints a dismal picture
of the realities of family life. Guilty that I am
unable to offer him grace for one more day, a
small moment in time, because huh, I miss him. The
reality is I miss him, I miss us, I miss

(05:23):
life as I know it. At this moment, life is
a foreign land we have visited before, and I am
reminded of all I hate about it, the way it
pulls you in and traps you in its wake for days, weeks,
months on end, no ability to look to the left
or the right, as one has drawn almost against their
will by the light at the end of the tunnel.
But something amazing happens when I speak my truth, not

(05:46):
out of anger, not needing him to fix it, but
just acknowledging it's all there, spoken out loud. Their presence
is no longer overwhelming, their power fading with every passing breath,
And as I lay there, entangled in his eyes, I
feel as love, soothing, reassuring, and real. The beast of emotion,

(06:07):
left untamed and unnamed, can easily swallow us whole. But
having the courage to draw it out of the deep
crevices of one's mind and shed the light of day
on it is like turning the light on and watching
the shadows of night that left you cowering as a
child under the covers disappear in an instant. In his arms,

(06:28):
I feel his love, soothing, reassuring, real, and for the
first time since I started sharing, I notice my heart
beating in time with his as one as it should be.
I think back to that day and I can't help
but feel in awe of all my husband was in

(06:48):
that moment. He could have got on defensive, He could
have dismissed my feelings or walked out, but he didn't.
He recognized that my expressions were just my feelings, not true.
He understood this had very little to do with him,
and everything to do with how I was responding to
my world in that moment. When I told him to

(07:09):
leave me alone, that I didn't want his help, he
chose to wrap his arms around me, and I let him.
It was a long, slow morning that day, but it
changed everything. The deadline was still looming and there was
still not enough time for us, but it changed us.
We reconnected with our truth each and every day. We

(07:30):
choose each other and we know that nothing, no problem,
no challenge, no big emotion, can ever change one simple truth.
We love each other no matter what. That day, cradled
in my husband's arms taunt me that my emotions, all
of them, the big, the bad, and the ugly, were

(07:50):
safe with him. I was safe with him, and after
we both came to an understanding of what was really
at the heart of all of that, we left stronger
for having shared it together. So you ask, what can
you do to help your daughters navigate a world of uncertainty,
a world that tells them that they're too much, that

(08:11):
they're not enough, that they can be anything they want,
but just not that. My simple answer is love her, mum.
I don't pretend to know the nuance of your particular relationship,
and for some this may actually seem near impossible. But
the safeguard is not in what you say, it's in
what you do. She's watching you, even when you think

(08:32):
she's self absorbed and uninterested. She's watching. Your daughter is
learning what emotional safety looks like by watching the way
you treat her mother when she's drowning in her own
intoxicating cocktail of emotions, at fifteen, at twenty five, at
thirty five. Who taught her that feelings can be expressed
and held without fixing or fleeing? You did through your

(08:54):
example of holding safe space and place for her mother's
big emotions. The fact that you gather together at this
time every year tells me there is no one who
will ever love her the way you do. No one.
She is pleash of your flesh, blood, of your blood.
You would literally give your life for her. You are
giving your life for her. But when her day gets

(09:17):
overwhelming like mine did that day, who do you want
her to talk to? Some boy who thinks he knows
how to fix all her problems without any listening skills
at all, or her dad, the one man in her
life who makes her feel safer and stronger when she's
sixteen and overwhelmed, when she's twenty eight and heart broken,
when she's forty and lost. Who do you want her

(09:39):
to turn to? The Truth is that one day she's
going to find her person, her one and only, the
love of her life, and you will take a back
seat to him or her. That's truth, and that's the
way it should be. But you will have also taught
her what to look for, someone who holds space for
her in all her seasons, who helps her feel safer,

(09:59):
and who loves her no matter what. Sometimes, the most
effective parenting we will ever do has nothing to do
with our children at all, and everything to do with
the person we choose to be. Just like my husband
did for me that day and for my girls on
countless other occasions, be the man who shows her each
and every single day through the way you love her mother,

(10:21):
that all of her, the big, the bad, and the ugly,
make up the glorious human that she is. For all
the women in your life, be that man.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Great stuff, Kyle, great stuff, And thanks for being so
nice to me. I didn't realize that I featured so
prominently very nice. They loved it. I hear that they
thought it was fantastic, and you gave them plenty to
think about. There's a great a great sentiment, a great quote.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
I heard it years and years ago. The most important
thing that a man can do for his children is
to love their mother. And I feel like you encapsulated
that really, really nicely. So if you're a father of
other girls and you listen to the poor, get in
touch with them, join the organization, make a commitment to
support the charity, but also to support your daughter. And
if you're not well, hopefully that was fun anyway, Hopefully
youve got heaps out of it. I think there's loads

(11:10):
of really important content there to help to make your
family happier.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Thanks Son, no worries.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
The Happy Families podcast will be back tomorrow and it's
produced by Justin Rulan from Bridge Mediamhammits provides research, adamin
and other support, and if you would like more and
fo about making your family happier, visit us at happy
families dot com dot au